A Personal Note To My Readers
My Dearest Readers,
For most of my life, I have written about love. The impossible sort. The kind that defies reason, challenges fate, and refuses to surrender even when the world insists it must. But the greatest love story I have ever known was never one I wrote. It was the one I lived.
It's with a shattered heart that I share the passing of my husband, Marc, after a brief and devastating battle with an extraordinarily aggressive form of brain cancer. For over three decades, Marc was my best friend, my partner in every adventure, my fiercest champion, and the quiet strength behind so many of the stories you have come to know. He believed in me long before the world knew my name as an author. He believed in my dreams, even the outrageous ones, and never once asked me to dream smaller. He was my everything.
I have always believed love is the most powerful force we possess. I still believe that. Perhaps more fiercely now than ever. But I'm discovering that grief is simply love with nowhere familiar to go. It lingers in the empty spaces, in the ordinary moments, in the silence where laughter once lived. These past two months, I stepped away from the world to be with Marc. There was nowhere else I wanted to be. No book, no deadline, no dream was ever going to matter more than the man with whom I had built my life. Financially, writing is how I support myself. Emotionally, writing has always been a form of therapy. This is where I have to find my way back to the page.
My forthcoming novel, Kiss Me in the Dark, was completed months before Marc's diagnosis. Its hero suffers a brain injury, a subject I could never have imagined would become so painfully intertwined with my own life. It was supposed to release November 17th, but I have chosen to release this book on March 28, 2027, Marc's birthday.
Not because the story is about him. It isn't. But because the man who stood beside me through every story deserves to be remembered in the turning of this one. I don't know what the coming months will look like. I only know that I will keep writing. Marc would have wanted that. He knew better than anyone that stories were how I made sense of the world, even when the world made no sense at all.
To those of you who have waited patiently for my next book, thank you. For your kindness, your understanding, and for giving me the grace to find my footing again.
I have written countless happily-ever-afters. I was blessed to live one. And though ours ended far sooner than I ever imagined, I would choose him again in every lifetime. If there is one thing I hope you carry away from these words, it is this: hold your loved ones a little closer, linger in their laughter, and never leave love unspoken. Life is far more fragile than we dare imagine, and the moments we share with those we love are the greatest treasures we will ever possess.
With all my love,
